A National Medical Honor Society Honors Yale Researchers

Five Yale physician-scientists were celebrated Jan. 20 by The American Society of Clinical Investigation with awards recognizing their accomplishments as either physician-scientists with notable research achievement early in their faculty appointment or as physician-scientists early in their careers (pre-faculty appointment) engaged in research.

The work of three of the awardees impacts cancer research and/or treatment: Amin Nassar, MD, and two members of the Yale Cancer Center, George Goshua, MD, SM, FACP, and Samir Zaidi, MD, PhD.

Goshua and Zaidi are among 50 awardees chosen from 172 nominees for the Young Physician-Scientist Award, along with Anna Eisenstein, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of dermatology at the Yale School of Medicine.

The 29 Emerging Generation awardees, chosen from 116 nominees, include Nassar and Jeff Gehlhausen, MD, PhD, also an assistant professor of dermatology at YSM. The Emerging Generation awards aim to encourage and inspire the awardees through participation in the April joint meeting — ASCI, the Association of American Physicians (AAP), and the American Physician Scientists Association (APSA) — and its community through leadership development workshops, panel discussions with ASCI members and scientific and career-oriented networking and mentorship.

Anna Eisenstein, MD, PhD

“During her post-doctoral research in the [Yale] laboratory of Andrew Wang, MD, PhD, she established a novel mechanism of action of commonly used nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (Eisenstein et al. Immunity, 2022) and has shown how these and other industrial xenobiotics play a role in the development of allergic disease. She also identified a new paradigm in allergy biology, termed remote priming, whereby antigen and adjuvant signals are spatially separated (Science Immunology, 2025).” Read more about ASCI's award for Eisenstein’s career and work.

George Goshua MD, SM, FACP

“The Goshua lab's work has led to increased uptake of wonderful basic science advancements across hospitals and health systems in the United States while transparently flagging concerning opportunity costs….to ensure patient out-of-pocket coverage in the US and in the lower- and middle-income country contexts, the Goshua lab endeavors to roll their work into clinical guidelines: so far doing so for the care of people with diagnosis of iron deficiency, immune thrombocytopenia, and upfront germline testing for individuals diagnosed with colorectal cancer.” Read more of the ASCI assessment of the Goshua lab's work.

Samir Zaidi, MD, PhD

“…an Assistant Professor and Stephen Sherwin MD Investigator at Yale School of Medicine. [Zaidi is] a physician–scientist specializing in genitourinary cancers, [who] leads a laboratory at YCC’s Center for Molecular and Cellular Oncology (CMCO). His lab investigates the mechanisms of oncologic progression, with a particular focus on lineage plasticity and stromal–immune interactions….His current research seeks to uncover early regulators of lineage plasticity and the tumor–promoting stroma that fosters immune evasion, with the overarching goal of improving outcomes for patients with advanced genitourinary cancers.” Read more about ASCI’s award to Zaidi and his work.

Jeff Gehlhausen, MD, PhD

“…he joined the [Yale] laboratory of renowned viral immunologist Dr. Akiko Iwasaki where he began studying the cause and effects of chronic antiviral signaling in autoimmune skin diseases like lupus. He applied single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics to cutaneous lupus, identifying novel stromal niches and retroelement-driven immune signatures that inform mechanisms of disease (Journal of Investigative Dermatology, 2025). ….His emerging research program at Yale focuses on how retroelements—genomic sequences that make up nearly 50% of the human genome—trigger innate antiviral signaling pathways and may serve as novel antigens for autoimmunity.” Read more of ASCI’s award summation of Gehlhausen’s work.

Amin Nassar, MD

“….Dr. Nassar’s research unites human genetics, clinical informatics, and artificial intelligence to predict toxicity and optimize therapeutic precision in immuno-oncology. His work has been recognized with multiple national awards, eight invited lectureships, and editorial appointments across top oncology journals, underscoring his emerging leadership in the field. Dr. Nassar’s long-term vision is to build a multidisciplinary laboratory that integrates computational modeling, population genomics, and translational immunology to generate predictive, ancestry-inclusive biomarkers and clinically deployable algorithms that personalize cancer therapy—fulfilling the promise of precision immuno-oncology for every patient.” Read more about Nassar’s early studies and more than 70 peer-reviewed papers.